Becker and Becker
New Haven’s fanciest new address is about to have its first occupants — with public-housing tenants sharing elevators with renters who can pay $4,000 a month.
That address is 360 State. That’s also the name of the fuel cell-powered 32-story apartment and retail tower fast approaching completion at State, Chapel, and Orange streets. The building will be Connecticut’s largest residential complex, complete with pool, doorman, fitness center, and natural foods co-op, all across the street from the State Street train station.
The development’s first tenants will move in Aug. 1, at which point floors 7 through 21 should be ready for occupancy, officials announced Monday. Most will pay high rents. But the 500 apartments include 50 “affordable” units, too.
Paul Bass
Twenty of those will be studios and one-bedroom apartments reserved for the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH). Authority Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton (pictured with Mayor John DeStefano) said at a press conference Monday that her agency is screening potential tenants from a 250-strong waiting list. Then it will forward potential tenants’ names to the complex’s management for a final screening.
Those apartments are reserved for single tenants who earn more than $44,800 a year or two-person households making up to $51,200. In practice, most households on the list qualify as “extremely low-income,” earning less than $10,000, according to DuBois-Walton.
Those tenants will pay no more than 30 percent of their incomes for the apartments, which begin at $1,300 a month for a studio. Federal Section 8 housing vouchers will cover the rest of the cost.
HANH contributed $3 million to building 360 State for the 20 apartments. They’re the same as the building’s other apartments, mixed in with the others imperceptibly, according to DuBois-Walton.
The idea of mixing low-income renters in with tenants of the city’s swankiest new tower continues the city’s policy of “deconcentrating poverty,” DuBois-Walton said. 360 State lies at the northern edge of the city’s Ninth Square district, where apartment complexes built in the ‘90s included similar set-asides of affordable units.
The mix also serves as the flip-side of New Haven’s efforts to “de-densify” public housing projects, Mayor DeStefano noted. Projects like Elm Haven, once composed 100 percent of poor families, have been rebuilt (as Monterey Place, in Elm Haven’s case) with more of an income mix. The same plan is underway for the Brookside and Rockview projects in West Rock.
Another 27 of the 360 State apartments are “workforce housing” units. That means households making 80 to 120 percent of area median income (around $43,000 for a single person) can qualify to rent studios for $1,084 (including utilities), rather than the $1,300 market rate price. People can apply through the state Department of Economic Development’s Housing Trust Fund Program, at this site. Applications must be postmarked by Aug. 26.
About 108 apartments overall have already been reserved at the complex, with about another six to eight units being snapped up each week, said Dorreen Trongone-Ciezki of Bozzuto Management, which is handling rentals on behalf of developer Becker and Becker out of a storefront at Orange and Chapel.